Chernobyl Children's Project International

video: "people who care": chernobyl volunteers

In this 7-minute video you'll see how, with your support,  Chernobyl Children's Project International volunteers are helping children and families who continue to live with the medical, social, and economic effects of the Chernobyl disaster.  (If you can't see the video above, click here.)

This month marks the 23rd anniversary of the accident, a disaster that displaced hundreds of thousands of people and put many regions of Belarus and Ukraine under severe economic strain.  The video describes CCPI's programs with some of the most vulnerable people in the region -- children with mental and physical disabilities, children living in institutions, and children with severe medical conditions.  You'll see our volunteer cardiac surgery teams at work, meet disabled young adults we are helping to live independently for the first time, and meet families created by joining children who lived in orphanages with loving and foster parents.

You can click here to learn more about how we help in Chernobyl regions. Click here to get daily updates on Twitter.  On the CCPI Channel on YouTube, you can experience the personal stories of our volunteers and the children and families with whom we work, and see documentaries about Chernobyl and CCPI.  If you like what you see, please make a donation to support our work. 

video: "return to chernobyl" -- a volunteer's story of survival, service, and learning

In the summer of 2003, architect, broadcaster, and Chernobyl Children's Project International volunteer Duncan Stewart was in Belarus to design two buildings for Chernobyl affected communities,  and to film a documentary.  He suffered a near fatal accident.

Two years later, in recovery from massive injuries, he returned to see the completed work, reconstruct his broken memory, and learn more about the impact of Chernobyl on children and families in Belarus.  This video tells the shocking story of Duncan's accident and rescue, his emotional reunion with the Belarusian doctors who saved him, and the CCPI mission that brought him to Belarus in the first place.

If you are viewing this post on email or a feed, you may need to click to the Chernobyl Children's Project International website to view the film.  This nine minute clip is part one of six parts.   We'll post the others periodically, or you can watch them now on the CCPI Chernobyl Channel on YouTube.

Shortly after his accident and in honor of the Belarusian medical professionals who saved his life, Duncan and his wife Agneta hosted a "Chernobyl Heart Ball" in Ireland that raised significant funds in support of our children's cardiac surgery program in Minsk.

Return to Chernobyl is a survival story and an emotional personal journey. And it's a great way to learn about the Chernobyl accident, the zeal of CCPI volunteers, and CCPI projects in Belarus that are making a difference in the lives of children and families who are rebuilding their lives in the aftermath of Chernobyl.

volunteer kids' dental program begins this month in chernobyl regions

A vivid memory of my first visit to the Vesnova Mental Asylum for Children some 6 years ago was the heart breaking state of the children's teeth. The sight and smell of over one hundred sets of rotting teeth -- and the suffering that undoubtedly goes with it -- is impossible to forget.

That is why we are glad to announce, starting this month, a dental program at both Vesnova and at the Soltanokva Asylum for adults. A volunteer team headed up by Teresa Cronin and Mary Sugrue will travel to Belarus twice a year to give dental care to children and adults living in these institutions, and to train caregivers on hygiene.

Chernobyl Children's Project International hires and trains nurses and caregivers to improve quality of care in understaffed institutions in Chernobyl affected regions. Teams of medical and therapeutic volunteers travel monthly to work with children and -- most important -- to train their peers in the community in techniques to improve the care of the children year round.

These photos demonstrate how critical is this program. If you would like to make a donation to support the CCPI dental care program, click here. Sponsorships are available, email me for details.

Photos include Vadim (bravely having his first dental exam), Maxim (a wonderful boy from Vesnova with terribly rotten teeth), Igor (at top, full of personality) from Vesnova, and a young adult from the Soltanovka.

physical therapy volunteer in action & very special chernobyl children off to camps

Pediatric physical and occupational therapist Marisa C. Birkmeier is one of hundreds of Chernobyl Children's Project International volunteers who donate their professional skills to help children affected by the Chernobyl disaster.  Marisa, who holds a doctorate and practices at Children's National Medical Center in Washington DC, recently returned from a trip to Minsk. She was a guest at the Belarusian State Sports University, where she lectured to scores of students and professors on current best practices in their field.  

Afterwards, Marisa accompanied CCPI medical care program coordinators Marie Cox and Valentin Chernyakevich to visit children in our Minsk community care program, a program that helps families take care of their disabled children at home, rather than resort to the nightmare of institutionalization.  The photos show Marisa working with children and sharing techniques to prevent further disability with one of our Belarusian team members. Click here to learn more about the community care program.  If you can, please click here to make a donation to support the program. 

CCPI camps bring fun and hope to disabled children and children recovering from heart disease and cancer.

Again this summer, your donations are making it possible for 200 children who live in contaminated areas of Belarus to attend summer camp on healthy soil. And we have a special commitment to send kids who would not otherwise be able to go.  At our Healthy Hearts camp, we teach good health and fitness habits to children who have received life saving surgery through the cardiac program.  Most of these children lived severely restricted lives prior to surgery. Camp is a place where they can, in many cases for the first time, revel in their new health and socialize with other kids. Our Rainbow of Hope camp is for children in recovering from cancer. Two very special camps welcome children from our community care program and the Vesnova Children's Mental Asylum. 

Meanwhile, CCPI welcomed 1000 children from Chernobyl regions to Ireland this past Sunday, where they will spend summer holidays. Some of the children will be guests at Paul Newman's Barretstown Castle camp for children facing cancer and other life threatening illness.  

video: watch ccpi volunteers in action in chernobyl affected regions

This 10-minute video was filmed in the fall by Ireland's RTE television, and shows Chernobyl Children's Project International volunteers in action in the Mogilev region of Belarus.

One of the children prominently featured in the piece -- Victor, the little boy with the cleft palate and tracheotomy tube -- died shortly after the filming. (Here is a photo I took of his grave last month).  His loss was a terrible reminder that children belong in families, not in institutions.

Along those lines, the film also introduces Ina Gudkovskie, who lived in an orphanage before joining a real family in one of CCPI's "homes of hope."  You can click here to learn more about the  Gudkovskie family, and watch the video to hear Ina (who speaks English) talk about how having a mother and father has changed her life.  Click the links to read the about the Zhila and Savin families -- happy homes made up of children who had suffered lives of neglect and abuse.  If you want to learn more about sponsoring a family home for children who have been living in orphanages, please email me.

Finally, the film updates the story of Vesnova asylum resident Sasha Levkin, who along with his friend Sasha appeared in the film Chernobyl Heart.  (Both boys are pictured here -- Sasha Levkin is seen holding a photo of Chernobyl's Hero, a Karakorum race horse
whose winnings are donated to CCPI.) Both boys have reached the age when they would typically be transfered to an adult asylum, where they would be warehoused until death.  The boys have feared and dreaded this prospect  for the 7 years we have known them.  In the film, you will see CCPI founder Adi Roche promising Sasha (as he weeps with happiness) that CCPI volunteers will build them a home of their own.   As I write this, that promise is coming true -- a CCPI volunteer team is in Mogilev right now building a disability accessible home for the two Sashas, and for 8 other disabled young adults who will be able to live with dignity, rather than being transfered to an adult institution.

When I talked to the two Sashas last month, however, "dignity" was not the word rolling off their lips -- it was more like: "Party!"  (Don't worry, we've hired staff to assist the young people and provide supervision!)  They were brimming over with excitement and anticipation.  After all of the difficulties Sasha has been through, it is almost surreal to realize that when I next see him, he will be able to serve me tea in his very own home.

A young woman of Ukrainian heritage, Christina Stegura has grown up hearing stories about Chernobyl, and hoped that there might come a time when she could help.

Now she will, and in a very substantial way.  Christina will serve as one of Chernobyl Children's Project International's representatives at United Nations Headquarters in New York. This unique opportunity is the result of a partnership between CCPI (a UN accredited non governmental organization) and Lehigh University of Bethlehem PA.

Christina, a dean's list student who is vice president of her school's global citizenship program and pursuing degrees in sociology and anthropology, will be the first of a series of Lehigh University students to represent CCPI at the United Nations. She will visit the UN every month to represent CCPI's work in Chernobyl affected communities, attend briefings, and report back to us on how we can support the UN Millennium Development Goals.  The Millennium Development Goals are a set of quantifiable targets in spheres of development and poverty eradication that are to be achieved by 2015.

Thanks to Lehigh University for this wonderful donation of time and talent, and to Christina to advocating CCPI to be the beneficiary.

Over 100 Irish, Australian and American volunteers will return home today after spending three weeks in Chernobyl affected regions of Belarus. 

We employ about 20 local staff in Belarus, have partnerships with a number of local organizations, and at any given time we usually have volunteers and program directors "in the field."  This trip, however, was a large scale effort many months in the planning. 

Most of the volunteers on this trip were were builders -- carpenters, plumbers, masons, and the like who gave up their vacation time to come and complete work on the Vesnova Asylum in Belarus.  (Here's more about how we help.)  Nurses and therapeutic staff joined the teams in Vesnova, where they trained local caretakers in proper techniques and followed up on care plans for the children, who have a wide range of physical and intellectual abilities.  About 50 very serious ill children live in the facility's "high dependency unit" and require extraordinary care.   

As this work was happening, a management team led by CCPI founder Adi Roche visited projects across the country and met with employees, local partners, and government officials.  Key areas for evaluation were our foster care program and community care program in Minsk.  Adi, joined by Jim Clarken -- our new general manager in Ireland -- and Marie Cox, our medical care program  director, also examined the effectiveness of a new "aid direct" program that provides year round deliveries of necessary supplies for our community centers.  This program improves upon our  annual aid convoy.  Now, we are able to deliver good and supplies as needed, and we are purchasing locally, which puts aid dollars back into the local community to raise the standard of living for all.  Now that certain supplies are readily available in Belarus -- which was not the case when we first started our work in the country -- we are seeing huge cost efficiencies in purchasing locally rather than trucking across Europe! 

The management team visited our completed community centers in Zhitkovichy and Petrikov, and surveyed potential new sites in Glutsk and Buda-Kachalova.  Our community centers and programs target the most under served and at risk communities.  The centers serve a wide variety of community needs . . . therapeutic services for disabled children, child care classes, vocational training and employment services, homework help, computer centers, and more.  Our objective is to give communities the means they need to become self sufficient and avoid the downward spiral of poverty and hopelessness that leads families to place their children in institutions.

We also spent time examining our hospice program in Gomel, to ensure that the needs of families with the most seriously ill children are being properly met by our team of local nurses and psychologists. Meeting these families face to face allows us to hear directly from them whether we are doing a good job and how we can improve our services in the community.

Even as we examined our on board projects, the seeds of new ones were sown in meetings with community leaders across the country who are eager to move forward from Chernobyl.  We'll report back with our progress.

Sasha Levkin is one of the many children with whom we work.  Although he is mentally fit, he lives at the Vesnova Children's Mental Asylum in a rural area of Belarus. Your support allows us to improve the lives of many children affected by the Chernobyl disaster, as well us to provide hope for the future.  We do this largely by working on the community level.  But, by getting to know Sasha through his story, we have the chance to appreciate that behind every statistic, there is a unique human being who deserves to be acknowledged.  I know Sasha, and I am very moved by his dignity and positive outlook in the face of unusually difficult challenges.  The photo shows him with CCPI volunteer Suzanne Reese.

Eighteen year old Sasha Levkin, a resident of the Vesnova Children's Asylum in Belarus, stays indoors for months each winter because his wheelchair cannot be maneuvered in the snow.  To mentally escape the boredom of the asylum he spends time looking at a small photo album he always carries with him in a black bag hanging from the back of his wheelchair.  He shows the album to all newcomers. Inside is a picture of his sister Katja, who has not been to visit him since early summer as she has no means of  transportation.  He also has photos of his cousins, his godmother, and his aunt.  None of them visit more than once a year, but he says he thinks of them every day. 

Sasha's father committed suicide when the boy was 9 months old.  His mother , who was also an alcoholic, began to beat him when he was a toddler, until he was sent to live with his aunt in 20o1.

My mother didn't care about me, she didn't feed me -- she is an alcoholic, always drinking vodka and then hurting me.  I never want to see my mother again.  She didn't hit me when I was very little.  At that time I could crawl and could get up from the floor to the sofa by myself, but then she started to beat me and I could no longer do such things.

Sasha liked living with his aunt, but unfortunately his physical disabilities were too great for her to take care of him. 

So, he is happy with his life at Vesnova, where the other kids see him as a leader, one of the cool guys. 

I like it here at Vesnova, this is home to me, I like the director, but some of the smaller kids drive me crazy.  In the future I would like to be a translator.  It looks like a good job and then I could help CCPI.

I gave Sasha an English-Russian language program on CD, and he picks up new words and phrases with ease.  Since he is not able to use his hands, he gets some of the younger kids to change the disks for him. He and his friends like to sit in a circle repeating phrases, and they take their studies very seriously.  When I last visited him in April, he was using some of his new language skills to flirt with the volunteers. Sasha was even confident enough to patronize me a bit -- he told me my Russian language skills were improving "quite nicely."  I was chagrined that I could barely thank him in his own language!

Sasha is eighteen years old now, and he will soon be moved into an adult mental institution, where his prospects for survival are very poor.  "I don't want to leave Vesnova.  I have friends here and don't want to leave what has become my home."  We are extremely concerned about Sasha's future, but not quite sure what we can do to help him.  I'll continue to post updates.  The image on the right shows Sasha when I woke him up in the middle of the night to show him that his photograph was published in PEOPLE Magazine last year.  He was beyond pleased. (And I still think he should have been on the cover, instead of whats-her-name Tom Cruise's latest wife.  Go figure!)

chernobyl children's project international appoints youth un representative

A young woman of Ukrainian heritage, Christina Stegura has grown up hearing stories about Chernobyl, and hoped that there might come a time when she could help.

Now she will, and in a very substantial way.  Christina will serve as one of Chernobyl Children's Project International's representatives at United Nations Headquarters in New York. This unique opportunity is the result of a partnership between CCPI (a UN accredited non governmental organization) and Lehigh University of Bethlehem PA.

Christina, a dean's list student who is vice president of her school's global citizenship program and pursuing degrees in sociology and anthropology, will be the first of a series of Lehigh University students to represent CCPI at the United Nations. She will visit the UN every month to represent CCPI's work in Chernobyl affected communities, attend briefings, and report back to us on how we can support the UN Millennium Development Goals.  The Millennium Development Goals are a set of quantifiable targets in spheres of development and poverty eradication that are to be achieved by 2015.

Thanks to Lehigh University for this wonderful donation of time and talent, and to Christina to advocating CCPI to be the beneficiary.

100+ chernobyl volunteers set to return home today

Over 100 Irish, Australian and American volunteers will return home today after spending three weeks in Chernobyl affected regions of Belarus. 

We employ about 20 local staff in Belarus, have partnerships with a number of local organizations, and at any given time we usually have volunteers and program directors "in the field."  This trip, however, was a large scale effort many months in the planning. 

Most of the volunteers on this trip were were builders -- carpenters, plumbers, masons, and the like who gave up their vacation time to come and complete work on the Vesnova Asylum in Belarus.  (Here's more about how we help.)  Nurses and therapeutic staff joined the teams in Vesnova, where they trained local caretakers in proper techniques and followed up on care plans for the children, who have a wide range of physical and intellectual abilities.  About 50 very serious ill children live in the facility's "high dependency unit" and require extraordinary care.   

As this work was happening, a management team led by CCPI founder Adi Roche visited projects across the country and met with employees, local partners, and government officials.  Key areas for evaluation were our foster care program and community care program in Minsk.  Adi, joined by Jim Clarken -- our new general manager in Ireland -- and Marie Cox, our medical care program  director, also examined the effectiveness of a new "aid direct" program that provides year round deliveries of necessary supplies for our community centers.  This program improves upon our  annual aid convoy.  Now, we are able to deliver good and supplies as needed, and we are purchasing locally, which puts aid dollars back into the local community to raise the standard of living for all.  Now that certain supplies are readily available in Belarus -- which was not the case when we first started our work in the country -- we are seeing huge cost efficiencies in purchasing locally rather than trucking across Europe! 

The management team visited our completed community centers in Zhitkovichy and Petrikov, and surveyed potential new sites in Glutsk and Buda-Kachalova.  Our community centers and programs target the most under served and at risk communities.  The centers serve a wide variety of community needs . . . therapeutic services for disabled children, child care classes, vocational training and employment services, homework help, computer centers, and more.  Our objective is to give communities the means they need to become self sufficient and avoid the downward spiral of poverty and hopelessness that leads families to place their children in institutions.

We also spent time examining our hospice program in Gomel, to ensure that the needs of families with the most seriously ill children are being properly met by our team of local nurses and psychologists. Meeting these families face to face allows us to hear directly from them whether we are doing a good job and how we can improve our services in the community.

Even as we examined our on board projects, the seeds of new ones were sown in meetings with community leaders across the country who are eager to move forward from Chernobyl.  We'll report back with our progress.

meet sasha levkin

Sasha Levkin is one of the many children with whom we work.  Although he is mentally fit, he lives at the Vesnova Children's Mental Asylum in a rural area of Belarus. Your support allows us to improve the lives of many children affected by the Chernobyl disaster, as well us to provide hope for the future.  We do this largely by working on the community level.  But, by getting to know Sasha through his story, we have the chance to appreciate that behind every statistic, there is a unique human being who deserves to be acknowledged.  I know Sasha, and I am very moved by his dignity and positive outlook in the face of unusually difficult challenges.  The photo shows him with CCPI volunteer Suzanne Reese.

Eighteen year old Sasha Levkin, a resident of the Vesnova Children's Asylum in Belarus, stays indoors for months each winter because his wheelchair cannot be maneuvered in the snow.  To mentally escape the boredom of the asylum he spends time looking at a small photo album he always carries with him in a black bag hanging from the back of his wheelchair.  He shows the album to all newcomers. Inside is a picture of his sister Katja, who has not been to visit him since early summer as she has no means of  transportation.  He also has photos of his cousins, his godmother, and his aunt.  None of them visit more than once a year, but he says he thinks of them every day. 

Sasha's father committed suicide when the boy was 9 months old.  His mother , who was also an alcoholic, began to beat him when he was a toddler, until he was sent to live with his aunt in 20o1.

My mother didn't care about me, she didn't feed me -- she is an alcoholic, always drinking vodka and then hurting me.  I never want to see my mother again.  She didn't hit me when I was very little.  At that time I could crawl and could get up from the floor to the sofa by myself, but then she started to beat me and I could no longer do such things.

Sasha liked living with his aunt, but unfortunately his physical disabilities were too great for her to take care of him. 

So, he is happy with his life at Vesnova, where the other kids see him as a leader, one of the cool guys. 

I like it here at Vesnova, this is home to me, I like the director, but some of the smaller kids drive me crazy.  In the future I would like to be a translator.  It looks like a good job and then I could help CCPI.

I gave Sasha an English-Russian language program on CD, and he picks up new words and phrases with ease.  Since he is not able to use his hands, he gets some of the younger kids to change the disks for him. He and his friends like to sit in a circle repeating phrases, and they take their studies very seriously.  When I last visited him in April, he was using some of his new language skills to flirt with the volunteers. Sasha was even confident enough to patronize me a bit -- he told me my Russian language skills were improving "quite nicely."  I was chagrined that I could barely thank him in his own language!

Sasha is eighteen years old now, and he will soon be moved into an adult mental institution, where his prospects for survival are very poor.  "I don't want to leave Vesnova.  I have friends here and don't want to leave what has become my home."  We are extremely concerned about Sasha's future, but not quite sure what we can do to help him.  I'll continue to post updates.  The image on the right shows Sasha when I woke him up in the middle of the night to show him that his photograph was published in PEOPLE Magazine last year.  He was beyond pleased. (And I still think he should have been on the cover, instead of whats-her-name Tom Cruise's latest wife.  Go figure!)